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More than 90% of workers in Australia have employer-based savings accounts, compared with less than half of American workers. Research from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College finds that more Australian plans have provisions for automatic enrollment and contribution escalations, and the country has more rules limiting early distributions from retirement-savings accounts. These private savings accounts are part of a three-part retirement system in Australia.

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Outsourcing noncore functions can save a wealth-management firm 20% to 30% over three to five years, a study from Celent says. Bookkeeping, document management, client reporting and client support are among areas firms can outsource, freeing up advisers to focus on actual advising, says Celent analyst Arin Ray.

Tontines, a Renaissance-era approach to investing for income late in life, should make a comeback, argues Moshe Milevsky, an associate professor of finance and mathematics at York University in Toronto. The strategy pools individuals' investments and returns profit to those who are still alive. Tontines can apply to any income-producing asset, Milevsky writes, and is more efficient than life annuities because it lacks costly guarantees.

This year's elections should feature a debate about how to boost retirement security, Putnam Investments CEO Robert Reynolds said at a Financial Services Roundtable event. Reynolds is calling for a three-part plan that includes changes to Social Security and employer-based savings programs. He also warned Congress not to cut retirement-savings incentives as a strategy to reduce the deficit. "National solvency and personal solvency go together," he said.

Professional women in their 30s and 40s increasingly are focused on retirement finances, narrowing the gender gap when it comes to savings and investments, some research and anecdotal evidence suggest. Women are more likely than men to join workplace retirement-savings plans, and they tend to defer more of their paycheck into the plans, Vanguard research found. However, women have less in retirement savings than men, and they face the disadvantages of lower pay and lower access to employer-based retirement plans.

President Barack Obama's budget proposal for fiscal 2013 seeks a program that would require employers without 401(k) plans to enroll workers in individual retirement accounts, similar to the way many employers now automatically sign up workers for 401(k) plans. One financial industry official says the measure would result in "staggering increases" in retirement savings and could boost the proportion of workers who save through employer-based plans from 50% to 90%. But some are skeptical of the president's motives or view market-based retirement-savings plans as a gamble.